Is neocities getting less creative?

[xero333]

I can't imagine people will be very nostalgic about the things people keep growing more discontented with even over in the core Web, especially since people are rebelling against all that like never before by coming over here to Neocities and the like; all this like I doubt people would be nostalgic for an oppressive government causing people to leave its country in droves, even if they weren't leaving it.

Absolutely! Agree with you on that. It would be an interesting study to really get to the root cause of WHY people are nostalgic for the 90s / 2000s web, and see if there's anything deeper at play other than just "it was more quirky".

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

Absolutely! Agree with you on that. It would be an interesting study to really get to the root cause of WHY people are nostalgic for the 90s / 2000s web, and see if there's anything deeper at play other than just "it was more quirky".

Ever heard of Mark Fisher?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Fisher#Hauntology

I'm pretty sure he is well known within the web-revival, and that there are some who try to culturally overcome the problems he described ;).

[xero333]

Ever heard of Mark Fisher?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Fisher#Hauntology

I'm pretty sure he is well known within the web-revival, and that there are some who try to culturally overcome the problems he described ;).

Woah, this is pretty interesting. Thanks for the link. Will definitely look into this more.

[e-]

I feel like I should apologize sense some people seem pretty ticked off about this, deservedly so.
 I was trying to open up a discussion but came off much more cynical than intended(it's a regular problem I have). ppl made some excellent points! Like "what does it matter to you"-to be honest I'm perpetually insecure about weather or not I'm 'doing it right'--most online communities have unwritten rules about what you're supposed to do and not do, I don't want to upset people by not conforming. Not that I'm into anything horribly controversial, it's just comforting knowing that whatever you do is acceptable. That was the initial draw to neocities for me. So when things get more focused and streamlined I get worried that I'm doing something wrong for being different.
No one here seems to think that though so yay!
I'm here for all the optimism, Make whatever u want  

[Absentmind]

While I do understand your concern, I really can't see anyone being nostalgic for the current web design trends. 2009 was still a great time online, and websites were still cool and quirky, so I completely get that people may be now taking inspiration from those sites, just as they did with late 90s / early 2000s sites.

In my opinion, there is nothing fun, quirky, or even interesting about today's design standards. Everything has that corporate, bootstrap look to it. Massive hero image taking up 100vh of the screen, button in the middle, scroll down to an entire new section, everything on one page. It's not fun, it's not interesting. It's dull, lifeless, boring design because the internet is now just a place where companies can suck the life out of you, bombard you with ads, and track you across the internet.

I opened a news website today, and I swear the experience was horrendous. Cookie pop up, newsletter pop up, another cookie preference pop up, another random pop up, a "click here to continue reading" button, elements moving on the screen when you go to click something. The current corporate web is an absolute joke and I can't see anyone being nostalgic over it. Again, just my opinion.

I could totally see people being nostalgic for things like current Web design and places like Facebook and Instagram, maybe it wouldn't have a cult following like the indie web does now but I think its important to realise that we have an intense perception of it. We are the initiated, we are "in the know", we know why we hate facebook and google etc etc but does the common every day person?

Nostalgia is often rooted in a visage to the past. Because as we age life gets harder, we get more responsibilities, we crave our youth (currently speaking as someone who has just turned 30). If someone see's scrolling through Instagram looking at memes or Watching video essays on Youtube or going to their favourite flat design website whatever that may be.

If I showed my sister who is 3 years younger than me, one of these sites, she will definitely be able to recognise it as an "old looking website" she isn't an "internet person" by any means yet she would be able to recognise it as nostalgic.

We forget that people still use these sites and systems and enjoy it. Loads of my friends love tiktoks, post regularly on Instagram and even still have a Facebook account (ok boomer) and so do many youth today. There is definitely culture to be found within, I used to spend so much time looking at memes on Instagram. Is it really so farfetched to think people wouldn't miss it if they ever changed how they looked or how those systems worked? after all flat-design is not here forever and will eventually be replaced by something new.

Unpopular opinion but people love Frutiger Aero and see it as this last bastion before the internet became commodified, but I think it's is exactly that. A hideous corporate style conjured by corporations, it's insincere in its humanist and natural aesthetics, it's pretty much the y2k equivalent of modern corporate art you see everywhere. It was hated (by designers) but accepted by normal everyday people in the 2000s but now loved by people for its nostalgia factor. Why? because its a visage to the past and we all love past.

Just some food for thought,

An interesting rabbit hole to read is Simulation and Simulacra by Jean Baudrillard if you're into this kind of stuff. I'll edit this post with more books in the future if I remember any as I cant think off the top of my head right now.


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Back to the main point of this thread. I've suffered from "Creative paralysis" when browsing Neocities. I work as a Web Developer and even I had struggled to churn out something because I would think "HMM is this creative enough for neocities?" It's a bad mindset for sure. I feel like aesthetics often takes away from the initial core ideals of the indie web as a whole. It's all about expression, and if you're expression is visually bland then so be it! Be yourself always, besides, it's not set in stone and you can always reinvent yourself digitally.

[DiffydaDude]

Ever heard of Mark Fisher?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Fisher#Hauntology

I'm pretty sure he is well known within the web-revival, and that there are some who try to culturally overcome the problems he described ;).

Hey i know another term like this! I caught it one day while listening to Resonance by HOME many years ago, i believe the word is "Anemoia"

Unpopular opinion but people love Frutiger Aero and see it as this last bastion before the internet became commodified, but I think it's is exactly that. A hideous corporate style conjured by corporations, it's insincere in its humanist and natural aesthetics, it's pretty much the y2k equivalent of modern corporate art you see everywhere. It was hated (by designers) but accepted by normal everyday people in the 2000s but now loved by people for its nostalgia factor. Why? because its a visage to the past and we all love past.

I see this a lot around online, people will hate something until it disappears, which is when they come to appreciate it. It's probably the driving factor in a lot of nostalgia these days. Honestly people blame capitalism for the bleaching of the web, which i do agree with, but i think a lot of it has to do with how people act online nowadays. Tragedies happened back in the 00s too, but nowadays there's always somebody going on about how dystopian the world apparently is and how some youtuber got exposed or whatever. I think that the whole problem with the internet is that people center everything around the bad parts because we started prioritizing ourselves on not being bad or cringe. If theres one thing i want the internet to do, its just let people live and that we actually just start doing stuff. Not some comments screaming about how bad the world is, not some video against the comment screaming about how bad the world is, not some video about how hopeless gen AI is or how some youtuber's awful discord DMs got leaked, or any of that. i just want things online to exist, to float calmly in the web like the gentle sailing of a fish in the water. literally any of those aforementioned topics is like strapping a weight onto the fish and letting it sink to the bottom of the ocean until it's crushed by the pressure. But that's just my 2 cents  sorry if this's been a bit much, this is just how the internet is bad from my perspective

[xero333]

If theres one thing i want the internet to do, its just let people live and that we actually just start doing stuff. Not some comments screaming about how bad the world is, not some video against the comment screaming about how bad the world is, not some video about how hopeless gen AI is or how some youtuber's awful discord DMs got leaked, or any of that. i just want things online to exist, to float calmly in the web like the gentle sailing of a fish in the water. literally any of those aforementioned topics is like strapping a weight onto the fish and letting it sink to the bottom of the ocean until it's crushed by the pressure.

I honestly agree so much. There is so much drama now that it's just getting ridiculous. Everyone has to one up everyone else, instead of just chilling and doing cool stuff. YouTube is one of the worst offenders for this, and YouTube drama has become so popular in recent years, it feels like the whole website is at odds with itself.

[Absentmind]

I honestly agree so much. There is so much drama now that it's just getting ridiculous. Everyone has to one up everyone else, instead of just chilling and doing cool stuff. YouTube is one of the worst offenders for this, and YouTube drama has become so popular in recent years, it feels like the whole website is at odds with itself.

Unfortunately guys, it's always been like that! Even before YouTube, you could make the point that the internet is very much more central today in where we find our drama (i.e youtube, instagram, tiktok) and therefore reaches greater audiences and, of course, our lives now are vastly different from life in the 00s.

I do see your point though, drama gets clicks and it was still the same back then. Granted it was often way more contained and not as life ruining as it is today.

But I digress! this is starting to move away from the original topic of the thread if you want to talk about this further, please feel free to PM me!

[pebble]

On the original topic, I personally love browsing neocities regularly because of how creative and fun the sites are to look at. Sure, setting the search to "last updated" is going to show you a bunch of blank pages and templates, but that's because it's bringing up a lot of sites that are brand new and haven't had a chance to grow and change yet. But keep scrolling. There are plenty of beautiful sites in there, too, and it's a shame to dismiss them because of the few that "aren't creative enough".

I also think part of the criticism about the sites using templates not being creative enough is an issue where you're just not getting the full picture. Many people who join neocities have no idea how to code yet, so starting with a template is a perfect way to learn for them. But, for a lot of them, it doesn't end there. I've followed a ton of sites on there that started with the famous Sadgrl layout builder, and then over time started to evolve and change until they were very clearly their owner's creations. You just need to give them a chance to grow (or even jump in and help out when they need it).

My own site started out as a template with almost no customization done on it. Over this past year, I've slowly added, updated, changed, and even outright replaced pages as I learned more about coding. At this current time, the only bit of that original template's code that still remains on my site is a tiny scrolling text box in the corner of one page on the site. (And that's currently left there simply as a sort of reminder/show of appreciation to the template I originally used. It will probably disappear eventually, too.)

One suggestion I have for anyone who is looking for sites to follow and feels the neocities home page doesn't bring up the randomness you're looking for, is to check out webrings and site directories instead. Most sites on there have at least a few "neighbor sites" linked as well.

[KittyTheKat]

Certainly some sites are less deviant from a design perspective, but I think templates and common elements have a couple of very good reasons to exist and be used regularly:

1. They're good starting points for someone who's learning to make something completely unique in the future. It's a lot easier to get ~wild~ with design principles and the philosophy of the web revival if you understand things that are standard. I'm sure there are many people out there who can learn from scratch but I'm also confident in saying most people who make impressive sites started from interpreting a template.

2. Templates are nice for people who want to be involved in the scene at large but don't want to put effort towards putting together their own stuff. I think it's important to accept people into the community who are less aesthetically-minded because they'll always have other things they're interested in or good at. Some of the most "generic" sites I've seen have been from people I respect immensely because of what they have to say on the forum, and likewise many relatively quiet people have amazing sites!

So in essence while on a surface level it may appear that Neocities is less creative, what that really means is that there are a lot of new people learning for the first time! Certainly most of them will drop out of their projects, but there will also be people who stick around and keep innovating!   

[DiffydaDude]

I honestly agree so much. There is so much drama now that it's just getting ridiculous. Everyone has to one up everyone else, instead of just chilling and doing cool stuff. YouTube is one of the worst offenders for this, and YouTube drama has become so popular in recent years, it feels like the whole website is at odds with itself.

Yeah like 2 youtubers announced they'd be scaling back a bit and and I hear "ALL THE YOUTUBERS ARE LEAVINGGGG!" and everybody is making a mockery out of it and forgetting the whole point. Like its the telephone effect clear as day/mud, the youtubers said that they werent leaving or desecrating their channels, they just wanted to scale back, and in fact Tom Scott is still active on his website (yay websites!). but theres all these youtubers, especially these same ones I see time and time again, that add a lot of 'digital MSG' to that story to make it more 'flavorful'. So i feel like the drama is only prominent because of channels making video essays and commentary videos on it, which makes me think the root of the issue is Youtube monetization.
I think that what i'm talking about is straying from the original topic at hand so i'd be down with making a new topic for this on the boards 

Unfortunately guys, it's always been like that! Even before YouTube, you could make the point that the internet is very much more central today in where we find our drama (i.e youtube, instagram, tiktok) and therefore reaches greater audiences and, of course, our lives now are vastly different from life in the 00s.

I do see your point though, drama gets clicks and it was still the same back then. Granted it was often way more contained and not as life ruining as it is today.

But I digress! this is starting to move away from the original topic of the thread if you want to talk about this further, please feel free to PM me!

I've noticed that actually! But the difference is that the site and other sites felt enriched by the creativity that we gave it. Also, it felt like we were able to gather in nice and awesome communities no matter how much they got bullied, like emo dudes and furries, and whatever happened just was that.
I think that what i'm talking about is straying from the original topic at hand so i'd be down with making a new topic for this on the boards